Canoeing the Clark Fork

In the summer of 1969 an acquaintance asked me if I knew how to work with fiberglass, to which I responded, “A little.” He went on to tell me he had a fiberglass canoe with a small crack. I told him to take a bit of sandpaper, rough up the fiberglass on each side of the crack. I brought some resin and fiberglass to his home and simply applied a little resin over the crack and surrounding it a bit, laid the fiberglass cloth on it and daubed more resin on top. He asked when it would be water ready. I asked how long it would be until we could lay the canoe in the water. He replied, to which I simply said, “This is a good time to get going!!” I caught the largest Rainbow Trout I have ever caught over all my years on a Renegade fly. He told me where we must duck down as it was very dark in time. We went out the next weekend during entirely daylight hours. I nearly had a heart attack to realize the rapids we had shot and overhangs we narrowly missed kissing that weekend before after it grew dark!!